Orteil wrote:In the end, we'll have a fairly complicated layout, so it'll be a good idea to throw in some warprooms or some transportation system.

As long as it's hub-based enough, it can have a nice and complicated layout, but still be relatively easy to get back to the beginning, then across the other side of the map from there.

You mean like a crab-shaped house, where the main hall is the body of the crab and a few rooms progress along each leg, with the lair of awesomeness being in the head and possibly a puzzle where the eyes are special windows or something?

Orteil wrote:In the end, we'll have a fairly complicated layout, so it'll be a good idea to throw in some warprooms or some transportation system.

As long as it's hub-based enough, it can have a nice and complicated layout, but still be relatively easy to get back to the beginning, then across the other side of the map from there.

You mean like a crab-shaped house, where the main hall is the body of the crab and a few rooms progress along each leg, with the lair of awesomeness being in the head and possibly a puzzle where the eyes are special windows or something?

That's... that's silly, but... Yeah, after all, why not :

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As Crab Nicholson's helicopter rises up in the sky, you catch a glimpse of his house down below. Holy shit, it's shaped like a motherfucking CRAB !

Also I thought we could just have a lot of mind-fucking revelations that could contradict each other from one game to another, but stay persistent in a single session. I.e :

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Crab Nicholson turns slowly to face you. Only then do you realize that he is the goddamn Batman.-"I'm the goddamn Batman, bitch !"Batman uses his grappling gun to flee to the living-room ! What do you do ?>FOLLOW BATMAN

-while restarting the game could lead to :

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Holy shit ! Crab Nicholson was your own daughter from the future all along ! What a twist !

I like the idea of rooms being unlocked, but when you have different puzzles in each room, the components to the puzzle solutions should not always be confined to that same room. Some puzzles could be self-contained, like in "The 7th Guest," but others should involve doing stuff elsewhere, be it gathering items, cleverly using said items, or talking to various people, like in the Sam & Max games. I would strongly recommend more of the latter type; it's more work to set up, but it encourages lots more exploration and thus lots more uncovering of shenanigans along the way. The shorter puzzles could be used as "stepping stones" for the larger ones. For instance, one Sam & Max puzzle from the newer games has criminals in two different locations that must be apprehended, and the proprietors of each location gives you an item or a piece of info that helps disable the criminal at the other location, and one such item requires that you complete a separate mini-game first. I would even suggest that the one puzzle that unlocks the final, best ending require actions in at least half the rooms of the house.

In short, make the most use out of every item, person, and event in the game as you possibly can.

I've had the impression from the get-go that puzzles will typically not be confined to a single room.In fact, I may have misunderstood someone's exact meaning, but the general idea I had in my head had something resembling quest paths where a series of puzzles are completed, altering your ability to complete some puzzles in a certain way, intertwining into some horrendously complex nightmare whereby the player will never really know what effects their actions have further down the line, partially because it's impossible for a single human to remember everything.

Put a WARDROBE in the Ultimade Awesomeness Room , you need a key to open it, then to find the key you must go to the kitchen and use the microwave with something made of metal, when you do it, the microwave explodes hitting you in the eye with a burned key, those which you can find in any bathroom door, you go back to the Awesome room and open the wardrobe, behind the door there are lots of old playboy pages sticked with a strange glue, a porn magazine with sticky pages and a CODE VAULT, to open the vault you need a code of 4 numbers, that you will find solving the other's rooms puzzles, whenthe vault opens, there is a C4 inside, ready to be armed and blow some shit up, when you got the C4 and use it in the Exit Door, you win the game and escape from his home to continue you boring as hell life.

Or, if you so choose, use the C4 as a valuable ingredient in the blender to make a drink, sculpt it into a hat and wear an explosive hat throughout the game, or other tasks, to improve your radness score.

God wrote:Or, if you so choose, use the C4 as a valuable ingredient in the blender to make a drink, sculpt it into a hat and wear an explosive hat throughout the game, or other tasks, to improve your radness score.

So, if the player want to end the game fast or more slowy he can choose, like hunting for itens, but one time he will need to finish the game.

Does anyone think that the endings could be based on the puzzle difficulties? As in, there are obvious solutions to get bad endings, or neutral reactions to progress the story and less obvious ones that yield rewards? (Ex: In the starting room: If there were a gun, you could take it, with the gun possibly determining your path.)

~You can shoot crab nicholson to piss him off, in which case path A: Deadly hide and go seek. ~You can check how many rounds are in the gun. You see 1. >You can find more and take the bullets and use them in the blender to make a 20mm round which can later be used with the crab nicholson AMR to blow a hole in either the side of his bedroom, or his lair. Each leading to different escape options.~You could have missed the gun entirely leading you to have to do Crab nicholson's quests or die. ~You could do his quests but then clutch pull the gun on him when his requests get insane, or if you fucked up at some point. Like, BRING ME CHEETOS. FUCK I ATE THEM ALL.~You could go with it, find his mittens and have a wild dance party.~You could drink a lot of beers with crab nicholson and stumble upon some weed which takes you to the land of NEGA CRAB NICHOLSON, ENEMY OF ALL THINGS AWESOME.~You could fail to stop Nega Nicholson from calling the fun police, and then you and crab nicholson must escape into the deepest parts of his LAIR OF AWESOMENESS, LEADING TO THE LOST CITY OF FUCKING MEGAAWESOMENESS with a usable GIANT MECHA ROBO NICHOLSON.

It feels like any puzzles in this game will need to be abstract and ridiculous. Like, you download porn onto a flash drive so you can play it somewhere and lead crab nicholson to it, and then whilst distracted for a moment, you can go somewhere where maybe he didn't want you going before.

I guess the question is, which seems most important: a lot of rooms, a lot to interact with, a lot of things going together? (combining items)